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Gourmet Night (17th October 1975)
In an effort to raise the standard of clientele and smarten the image at of Fawlty Towers, Basil arranges a gourmet evening and invites some local dignitaries for the occasion. Things take a turn for the worse when the new Greek chef decides to drown his sorrows after Manuel snubs his amorous advances, and upon the discovery of the inebriated chef, Basil calls on his local restaurateur friend André to help out with a couple of pre-prepared gourmet dishes which Basil will collect. Unfortunately, British Leyland doesn’t want to play ball as far as transport is concerned, and Basil becomes a ‘trifle’ annoyed……….
Basil is extremely derogatory towards poor Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibbs’ social standing when they sneak into the dining room to see what’s going on, informing them that they’re not allowed in the dining room on such an auspicious occasion and that he’ll be sending their bread and cheese up to their rooms presently.
Not touched upon in this episode.
There’s no real confusion in Gourmet Night other than Basil really not getting Polly’s enthusiastic hinting that Kurt is somewhat inebriated in the kitchen when he should be cooking.
The four main guest cast playing the dining guests are well chosen. Particularly familiar is Allan Cuthbertson, a stalwart of 1970’s sit-coms who plays Colonel Hall, and his on-screen wife was played by the diminutive Ann Way, a perfect compliment to Allan Cuthbertson’s six foot plus stature to accentuate Basil’s gaffes on Mrs Hall’s size.
There’s a rather tenuous Doctor Who related link between two other members of the guest cast in Gourmet Night. Kurt was played by Steve Plytas, who also played Wigner in The Tenth Planet, and André was played by André Marrane who was Benoit in the following Cyberman story, The Moonbase, both of whom were standard and rather stereotypical foreign characters in the series. Next Episode: The Germans! [Editor's note - I got carried away (again) and took too many DVD screen grabs (again) so here are the rest of them. Apologies if the page takes a while to load (again)] "Get a clean one"
"This chips are awful" "He burst his zip today"
And the "delicious" looking anti-duck
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I
remember almost wetting myself with laughter when first watching this
episode as an adult about 12 or 13 years ago, particularly in the scene
where Basil forgets his name and pretends to faint in front of his
distinguished guests. Gourmet Night has classic elements of farce with
Manuel treading on a roast duck and falling over, Basil picking up the
wrong dish from André’s kitchen table, and later him smashing into kitchen
door at the hotel as he prepares to serve. Kurt, the Greek chef, is a
worthy one-off addition to the hotel staff, if for no other reason than
for Sybil to be able to correct one of the guests’ misunderstanding that
he previously worked in the town of Dorchester rather than the Dorchester
Hotel in London! The hotel staff once again come to Basil’s aid when chaos
ensues around him, this time to the point where Manuel tries his hand at
Flamenco guitar, Polly attempts to sing a selection of songs from the
shows, and even Sybil joins in by entertaining the hungry dining guests
with some feeble jokes which only she seems to find amusing.
Along
with the series’ first episode (A Touch of Class), the whole point of
Gourmet Night is for Basil to elevate his standing within the higher
echelons of the Torquay community, thinly disguised as an exercise in
providing the occasional Cordon Bleu dining experience for the local toffs.
This is demonstrated perfectly when one of the families cancels their
reservation at the last minute and Basil rather selfishly remarks as to
the reason for the cancellation: ‘Well let’s hope it was nothing trivial!’
In his desperation to familiarise his relationship with one of the
distinguished guests, Basil insists that they met at a fete a year or so
before. Whether this is true or not we’ll never know, but it does seem
like another typical Fawlty attempt to ‘get in with the crowd’, however
tenuous the link may be. 
The
bar scene where Basil is attempting to introduce himself to his guests
(and his guests to each other) is one of my favourite moments from this
episode, as mentioned above when I saw it a decade or so ago. Basil seems
to be putting his foot in it at every opportunity here, whether it be
enquiring as to the health of the Hall’s late daughter, his inability to
introduce the Twichins to the Halls whilst Colonel Hall’s face is
twitching away, or his unwitting insults towards Mrs Hall on her limited
stature. Aside from Basil’s Pythonesque ‘silly walk’ in The Germans,
Gourmet Night also has what must be the classic moment of the
series when Basil gives his unreliable Austin 1300 a ‘damn good thrashing’
with the branch of a nearby tree. If there was ever a moment which
confirms the man’s unstable mind, this is it, and I find it particularly
amusing that he gives the car an opportunity to start its engine by
counting to three but doesn’t actually turn the ignition key at all!
